Now our Stadium will have the legacy it deserves

Thursday 10 February 2011 12:22 BST

Reprieve: after the Games, the Stadium will become a dual purpose football and athletics venue

There we would have been. Replete with good feeling after a brilliant Olympics, basking in international praise for having put on a glorious spectacle, London and Britain on top of the world. And in would have come the bulldozers to start laying waste to the centrepiece stadium.

It would have made us a laughing stock, which is why the outcome of the contest to take over the main 2012 venue was always going to be West Ham. The football club's scheme retained the stadium. Rival Tottenham's plan would have entailed knocking it down.

Imagine how that would have played out. In terms of reputation, the UK would have been shot. There would also have been an outcry for another reason: we won the right to host the Games because we promised track and field would remain in the stadium - Spurs would have shifted them to Crystal Palace and a purpose-built athletics ground. That isn't what we agreed to do and the rival cities who lost out to London, plus the International Olympic Committee, would have been enraged. Never again would the UK be trusted. So, the news that West Ham is to be selected as the preferred bidder for the stadium when the body charged with sorting out what happens afterwards, the Olympic Park Legacy Committee, meets tomorrow is welcome.

Lord Coe, who made that pledge to the IOC, must be relieved. The Government too. Much is being staked on the Games, not just in terms of showing we know how to hold a giant party and sports-fest. Ministers and their advisers are talking up 2012 as the year of national renewal, when, as they see it, the bad, tough stuff of 2011 is put behind us and we seriously pursue economic growth, with the Games, coming halfway through, as the defining uplifting event.

To have the stadium destroyed and an almighty row engulfing it, in those circumstances, would have been unthinkable.

The Mayor, as well, will be happier. His predecessor, Ken Livingstone, played a significant role in securing the Games for London. He was a huge advocate of them being located in the East End and of the need for economic and social revitalisation. Boris would have found it hard to live down the decision to drive a stadium-sized hole in that argument. Given that Johnson and Livingstone go head to head again at the ballot box in 2012, ahead of the Games, with hosting them the prize, his reason for being delighted at West Ham's triumph is twofold.

Not that this is by any means the perfect outcome. Coe, for one, is blind to the reality that athletics might fill stadia for an Olympics or world or European championship - but for a league meeting involving Enfield & Haringey Athletic Club and Birchfield Harriers?

He should never have staked London 2012 on that premise. The counter-claim goes that without the commitment to retain the stadium for athletics we would never have defeated Paris and the other cities in the first place. But perhaps, like Coe, the IOC needs to wise up about where hurdling and triple-jumping come in the popularity rankings compared with other sports.

The lesson of the mess we've got into, subsequent to winning, then determining who will have the stadium once the Games are over, is that in future we should pay closer attention to what it is we are offering and have our ducks lined up before we make our bid.

As it is, we found ourselves playing witness to a spat between Spurs and West Ham, with Coe, his colleagues and political leaders anxiously awaiting the result.

Tottenham's plan was not without merit. It did not require an injection of public money (West Ham's will need a £40 million loan from Newham council) and by relocating running, jumping, shot-putting and the rest to Crystal Palace, it paid due heed to where track and field sits in the national consciousness. It also involved the presence of AEG, the music and entertainment giant and a proven winner with the transformation of the O2 across the Thames at Greenwich. (To be fair, West Ham have lined up Live Nation, AEG's arch-rival, to put on pop concerts in the stadium.)

The Spurs' proposal underlined another truth: not only does athletics not grip the public most of the time but football fans do not like watching matches across a running track. In the UK in particular, our national sport derives much of its appeal from the supporters being close to the action. Even in Europe, where tracks around pitches are commonplace, they've recognised their games lack atmosphere and are busy switching from mixed-use to football-only arenas. Just as they're doing that, we're moving in the opposite direction with our landmark Olympic Stadium.

It's not as if the West Ham alternative does not envisage substantial building work. The 80,000-seater stadium will still be reduced to 60,000, and as it was designed as a temporary structure, some £95 million will have to be spent on making it permanent and adding a full roof, hospitality boxes and other facilities.

At least, though, it will still be the Olympic Stadium as we know it. And West Ham is a more local club than Spurs.

There is, however, one great unknown: can West Ham fill all those seats? Spurs already command higher attendances at their White Hart Lane ground. West Ham are currently locked in a relegation fight while Spurs are at the other end of the table, challenging for a place in the elite Champions League. There again, nothing is predictable in football - it wasn't that long ago that Spurs were themselves in the doldrums.

What is more certain is the difficulty in being able to attract 60,000 to an athletics fixture. The choice we've made is between scrapping a stadium and maintaining what may turn out to be a white elephant. We've gone with the latter but we should not be under any illusion: it's far from ideal.